Denys Val Baker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Denys Val Baker
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| Born | Denys Baker 24 October 1917 Poppleton, England |
| Died | 6 July 1984 (aged 66) Penzance, England |
| Pen name | David Eames, Henry Trevor, David Valentine |
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| Nationality | Welsh |
| Genre | Autobiography, short story |
Denys Val Baker (born October 24, 1917 – died July 6, 1984) was a talented Welsh writer. He was famous for his short stories, novels, and books about his own life. Denys also worked as an editor and helped promote art in Cornwall, England.
Early Life
Denys Baker was born in Poppleton, York, England, on October 24, 1917. His father, Valentine Henry Baker, was a pilot from Wales. His mother, Dilys Eames, was from Anglesey in North Wales. She was a harp player.
Denys grew up in Sussex and later lived with his parents in Surbiton, near London. He was very proud of his Celtic background and felt more Welsh than English. This pride often showed up in his writing.
Denys believed in peace and was a pacifist his whole life. This means he was against war and violence. Before World War II, he chose not to fight in the army. Instead, he volunteered to help with farm work in Jersey. When the war got closer, he returned to London. He became a secretary for a peace-loving group called Youth House. During the Blitz, when London was bombed, he helped with rescue work.
Writing Career
Denys Val Baker loved writing from a young age. He especially liked writing short stories, which were very popular back then. He sent his stories to many different magazines.
Thanks to his father's friends, Denys got a job as a reporter. He worked for the Derby Evening Telegraph for three years. After that, he moved to London and worked as a journalist for various newspapers. He also started earning money by writing freelance articles and selling short stories. Around this time, he legally changed his last name to Val Baker to honor his father.
In the early 1940s, Denys started his own magazine called Opus, which later became Voices. It featured stories, poems, and reviews by other writers. Many of these writers later became very famous. He also created Little Reviews Anthologies, which collected the best writings from different literary magazines each year.
His first collection of stories, Selected Stories, came out in 1944. He then published his first novel, The White Rock, in 1945. This book was also published in the US and the Netherlands. He wrote two more novels soon after. Denys wrote many short stories, and over 100 of them were read on BBC radio.
Life in Cornwall
Denys had always loved Cornwall, a beautiful area in England. In 1956, he moved there, settling in St.Ives. This move brought new ideas to his writing. He continued writing short stories and also started a magazine called The Cornish Review in 1949. This magazine shared poems, stories, and art from Cornwall. It ran for three years and then was brought back in 1966 for many more issues.
In 1959, he wrote an important book called Britain's Art Colony by the Sea. It was about the many artists who lived in Cornwall, especially in St. Ives. As his family grew, Denys lived in different places around Cornwall. His family life there inspired many funny books about his own experiences. His book The Sea’s in The Kitchen (1962) was very popular. He wrote many more autobiographical books after that.
Denys also loved the sea. When he bought his own boat, the MFV Sanu, it gave him ideas for more books, stories, and articles. He continued to write a lot throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Sadly, in the early 1980s, his health got worse, which made it hard for him to write as much.
Death
Denys Val Baker passed away on July 6, 1984, in Penzance, at age sixty-six. He had written a huge number of books: fourteen novels, twenty-two short story collections, twenty-six autobiographies, and over forty anthologies. He also wrote many hundreds of short stories and articles for magazines around the world.
His books were so popular that in the year he died, he was among the top 120 most borrowed authors in the UK.
Family Life
Denys Val Baker was married twice. His first wife was Patricia Johnson, a librarian, whom he met in 1942. They had one son, Martin, born in 1944. This marriage ended in 1948, and Denys moved to Cornwall. He lived there for the rest of his life, except for short times in London and Bermuda.
In 1949, he married Jess Bryan (born 1922). Jess had two daughters, Gillian and Jane. Denys and Jess then had three more children: Stephen, Demelza, and Genevieve.
His family life in Cornwall began in 1948 when he rented a small cottage near St Ives. As his family grew, they moved to different places like Penzance and Sennen Cove. They eventually bought a large house called the Old Vicarage in St Hilary. Here, Jess started her own pottery studio, which she ran for many years.
In 1954, the family moved away from Cornwall for three years, living in Kent and London. But they soon returned to St Ives in 1957. They settled in a house called St Christopher's, which overlooked Porthmeor beach. Jess's pottery business became very successful there. Denys often wrote and helped customers at the pottery. It was here that he started writing many of his autobiographical books, inspired by his family life.
In 1967, the family moved to the Old Sawmills, a big house in a quiet woodland area near Golant. This house could only be reached by boat or by walking along a railway line. Denys loved writing in an old shed there. The older children had started their own lives, but they often visited, making the Sawmills a busy place. The family also bought a large boat, the MFV Sanu, which they moored nearby. Jess continued her pottery work in Fowey. Jess and Denys even spent a year in Bermuda when Jess was offered a pottery teaching job there.
When they returned in 1972, they moved to another old millhouse at Crean, between St. Buryan and Land's End. Denys continued to write in a shed, just like before. Today, there is a bench overlooking the sea along the cliff path at Zennor, dedicated to Denys Val Baker's memory.
